Generally, with adjustable beds used as turning beds and the like to assist the postural change of care recipients in order to prevent the occurrence of decubitus ulcers, more commonly known as bedsores, the person is turned by tilting at least part of the mattress on which the person is lying at an angle (see Japanese Published Patent Publication No. 6-14824). The majority of these types of beds employ a mechanism that tilts the mattress toward one side or the other from a horizontal position.
Using this mechanism employed in turning beds, the posture of the care recipient is changed from a position lying flat on a horizontal mattress (i.e. supine) to a lateral position in which the person is lying on either their left or right side (i.e. lateral). Here, the most stable posture for a person turning laterally is a flexion position with knees bent and hips flexed. For this reason the caregiver, when moving the care recipient from a supine to a lateral position, preferably adjusts the person's posture to be suitably placed in a flexion position.
While typical turning beds support postural changes from a supine to a lateral position, they do not, however, go as far as to change posture to a flexion position. To achieve a flexion position, the caregiver is thus forced, after the turning bed has turned the person, to manually change the care recipient's posture while supporting the person's body weight. Apart from requiring considerable strength on the part of the caregiver, the care recipient may be caused both physical discomfort due to the caregiver's lack of experience in performing this difficult task, and psychological anxiety each time the task is periodically performed.
Consequently, one cannot honestly say, from the viewpoint of care recipients, that currently available turning beds provide adequate care.